Explain that "Cantonese" is also called "vernacular"? Hong Kong also says that "Cantonese" is not called "Hong Kong dialect".

Guangdong, referred to as Guangdong. Cantonese is "the language spoken by people living here, so it is naturally called' Cantonese'." This is just a literal meaning and can't be said to be wrong. This is the same reason that Arabic numerals are not invented by Arabs, but they are also called Arabic numerals. Cantonese is popular in Guangdong Province and occupies the mainstream position. It is scientific to call it "Cantonese". In fact, among Cantonese ethnic groups, people call this language "vernacular", which is different from the classical Chinese used in reading at that time. This is what people call the language they speak, and I think it is the most appropriate expression in Cantonese so far.

It is an indisputable fact that Cantonese originated from the mixture of ancient Vietnamese and ancient Chinese. This explains why Cantonese is obviously related to Zhuang and even Thai (because everyone has the genes of ancient Vietnamese). As for whether Cantonese is a "language" or a "dialect", it is purely a matter of division method and political trend. From the perspective of linguistics alone, we can only say how similar the two language varieties are (generally from the statistics of basic vocabulary), and it is impossible to draw a scientific line. As we said, this line is language, and dialects are within the line. The division of dialects and languages is largely a social and political issue.

For example, Serbian and Croatian in Europe are basically the same, but they are regarded as two languages because of the bad relationship between the two ethnic groups. Is this an example that we should refer to when dividing language dialects?

This is not political interference in academics, but the division of dialect languages is often based on the national self-awareness of language users. Political and social factors must be considered when discussing the academic issues of "dialect" and "language", which is a bit like sociolinguistics. However, it is a bit excessive to say that all academic problems with political elements are political interference in academics.

Due to the huge differences between Cantonese and northern languages/dialects in China, it is unacceptable for everyone to classify Cantonese as a dialect of Chinese.

With regard to the origin of Cantonese, after repeated argumentation and searching for information, the conclusion is that it originated in Wuzhou and Guangzhou is the orthodox language. Wuzhou was the first garrison area where Han people arrived in Lingnan during the Qin Dynasty, and it was the center of Southern Han culture for a period of time. Until Panyu was the head of South Vietnam, it was generally believed that the upper class at that time was bilingual, and the Chinese they used at that time was the ancestor of Cantonese today. And the traces of ancient Chinese left in modern Cantonese. For example, Cantonese people say "nothing" means "nothing", and he (she) means "you", "frugality" and so on. These are the usages of ancient Chinese ("frugality" originally meant to be stingy, but later it was extended to mean frugality. For example, money refers to coins of poor quality in the Song Dynasty. Modern Cantonese means saving money. ), also proved this point. It is reasonable to believe that Cantonese is a large-scale transformation from ancient Vietnamese to Chinese, rather than a place where Chinese was first used and then spread slowly as a standard. Its situation is just like a kind of "World English" produced by the large-scale learning of English all over the world, or the regional Mandarin produced by the large-scale conversion of a region into Mandarin.

In this way, where to use Cantonese first is another valuable question. It can be said that Cantonese is not a single source, but similar variants have appeared in different regions, and then gradually merged. Of course, in terms of time, Wuzhou is the earliest. However, the ancient Cantonese in Wuzhou does not necessarily spread to other places. On the contrary, the vernacular of Wuzhou, and even the vernacular of other places, was handed down from Guangzhou, about the time when the port was opened in the late Qing Dynasty. This is the same as "the origin of football is China, and modern football came from Europe".

As for the origin of Cantonese in the Pearl River Delta, there are also many controversies. One is in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and the other is in Guduan, Zhaoqing. I prefer the latter statement. Guangdong people generally know that the history of Foshan is longer than that of Guangzhou, that is, Foshan precedes Guangzhou (Guangzhou was also called Panyu at that time). Zhaoqing (Duanzhou) has a history no less than Foshan. Therefore, those who support the view that Cantonese originated in Guangzhou simply reverse the historical order. However, with the development of Guangzhou city, Cantonese has developed and expanded in Guangzhou through the influence of the provincial capital. So some people call Cantonese "Cantonese". People from other provinces often can't tell the difference between Cantonese and Cantonese, thinking that they are all the same. In fact, there is an accent difference between the two, and people who can listen can hear it at once. There is little difference in Cantonese accents and dialects spoken by people in the little Pearl River Delta (between towns), but there is obvious difference outside the little Pearl River Delta.

For example, in Zhanjiang and Maoming in western Guangdong, people say "I won't go" instead of saying "I won't go" like people in the Pearl River Delta. This confuses the usage of "no" and "no". This can be said to be a variant of Cantonese.

The Cantonese circle extends from Guangzhou to the surrounding areas (especially to the west). The farther away from this center, the greater the phonetic and lexical differences in Cantonese. When people from the Pearl River Delta go to other Cantonese-speaking areas, they may not understand the Cantonese spoken by the locals.

In fact, even in Guangzhou, people in different urban areas and different age groups speak different accents of Cantonese.

The Cantonese spoken in Baiyun District is different from that in the old four districts (Liwan, Yuexiu, Haizhu and Dongshan), with obvious accent. So is Huangpu. Because Baiyun and Huangpu belong to the urban-rural fringe, the Cantonese spoken by suburban people and urban people is of course different. Panyu and Huadu (especially Huadu), newly merged into Guangzhou, have different accents from Guangzhou. In Guangzhou, middle-aged people over 40 and young people under 40 have different accents. Generally speaking, the accent of middle-aged people is more cadence and blunt, not as soft as that of young people. In recent years, young people have watched more TV dramas in Hong Kong, and their accents are different from those of the older generation in Cantonese.

Let's talk about another branch of Cantonese-Hong Kong dialect.

As for the last edition, "in fact, there is no essential difference between Hong Kong dialect and Guangzhou dialect, and even the accent can't be heard by careless people." At the beginning, Hong Kong people learned "Guangfu dialect" from Guangzhou people, but in the process of learning, perhaps because of the lack of cultural background, they could not fully and correctly understand China culture, resulting in some pronunciation mistakes. " There is a serious prejudice, so please forgive my misunderstanding. I hereby correct it, because objectively speaking, no language is more "correct" than another. Whether it is "correct" depends mainly on subjective judgment. There are also obvious differences between Cantonese in 18 century and Cantonese in 1950. Is Cantonese in the 18th century better than the current "old school" Cantonese? Is Cantonese in Ming Dynasty better than Cantonese in18th century? What is the most authentic Cantonese? Is that Zhao Tuo accent? Whether "standard" is not a scientific issue, but a social cognitive issue.

In addition, Hong Kong people did not "learn Cantonese", but the first people who moved to Hong Kong after the Opium War were all from Guangzhou, especially those who fled Guangzhou during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Before that, the original inhabitants of Hong Kong Island were mainly Hakkas and Hakkas. However, due to their lack of economic and political strength at the beginning of the city, their language has not been the main language of Hong Kong. On the contrary, immigrants from Guangzhou successfully "transplanted" Cantonese to Hong Kong and "unified the world" to this day.

Since the opening of 184 1 to the liberation of 1949, Hong Kong and Guangzhou have maintained close political and economic relations, and the variation of Cantonese in the two places has been going on simultaneously. In fact, before the 1950 border blockade, ordinary Hong Kong citizens regarded Guangzhou as their real hometown. In the old Hong Kong saying "go to Guangzhou" and "go back to the provincial capital" can prove this point. Generally speaking, when you go back to other places in the mainland, you will only say "go to Beijing", "go to Shanghai", "pass through Macao" and "leave South Asia", which is emotionally different from "go back to Guangzhou". By the way, a friend of mine said that going to Guangzhou means "going to Guangzhou", but he said that going to Shanghai means "going back to Shanghai", which shows that although their family has long been assimilated by Hong Kong people, they still retain some feelings for their ancestral home, which also shows that they are a little different from the mainstream Guangdong Hong Kong people. The difference between Hong Kong dialect and Guangzhou dialect mainly occurred in the period from 1950 to 1979 when the border between Hong Kong and the mainland was blocked after liberation. If we look back at Hong Kong Cantonese films in the early 1950s today, or ask Hong Kong people over 70 years old, we will find that their accents are closer to Yue Yun edited by Huang Xiling in the early 40s.

After the 1950s, due to the interruption of communication between Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the language varieties of the two places began to differ and were no longer synchronized. The feature of Hong Kong dialect is that there is an extra vowel "eo", but there is no difference between nasal "ng", aspirated "kh" and unventilated "K". It stands to reason that this variation is normal, and it has nothing to do with whether Hong Kong people understand the cultural background of China, but whether the writing is fallacious or not is another matter. Similarly, Cantonese in Guangzhou has also changed in these 30 years. This is mainly to move closer to Mandarin. This is the same as the situation that Hong Kong dialect borrows a large number of English words.